The next morning, the air was clear and bright, the sea sparkling as if nothing terrible had happened the night before, as if the storm had merely served to clear the air.
But the day’s headlines were stark. The Germans had indeed signed a “non-aggression pact” with the Soviet Union. And that, apparently, was enough to send people all along the Riviera scurrying in panic, all at once, to get out of France.
When she showed up for work at the Grand Hotel, Annabel saw the suitcases piling up in the lobby, the telegrams coming and going in a frantic flurry. The reception desk was completely besieged, with loud voices of frightened guests and overwhelmed staff ringing out across the lobby.
“You don’t understand! I must go, now!” they all said, indignant with impossible demands, tearful when told they could not immediately get what they wanted.
The guests were all trying to do the same thing at the same time—book a ticket on any ocean liner or train or plane or even coal ship or fishing boat that would carry them away—but already these were being declared “sold out.”
Those who had succeeded in booking passage departed, mostly in pairs, Annabel noted, as if they were exotic creatures specially chosen to get a seat on Noah’s Ark.
Seeing all this, she was reminded of the lobsters scurrying across the lawn trying to escape the storm.
The gossip was flying among remaining guests breakfasting on the terrace while enviously watching luckier, triumphant departing guests fluttering out the door.
“I hear that Winston Churchill left the casino at Monte Carlo and just flew off to London without paying his gambling losses, which they say were quite significant,” a local dowager said as she dealt out a game of cards to play with her visiting friend. Their jeweled fingers sparkled in the sunlight.
“And what about the Cannes Film Festival?” her companion wondered.
In fact, the management staff of the Grand Hotel had had a quick meeting about that very subject. At first, most events for the Festival de Cannes were declared postponed for ten days. But soon it became clear that this, too, would be untenable. People were mournfully saying that the whole idea of the Cannes Film Festival was an infant strangled in its cradle.
Oncle JP told Annabel that Olympia Studios was one of the first to cancel its festival events. “Sonny is ready to cut his losses and get out of Europe. He had already secured a private liner to take all his stars home after the festival anyway,” he said, “so now Alan managed to bribe, cajole, and threaten the captain into agreeing to sail ahead of schedule. They sail tonight. Sonny let me know that your services are ‘done,’ Annabel, so you are assigned to the pool area for the morning shift.”
And there she discovered that one single event had not yet been canceled: the screening of the festival’s showpiece, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Apparently that was still to take place, making it the gala opening—and probable closing—of the festival.
Therefore, Charles and Elsa were not leaving. Annabel found the couple sitting stoically and serenely at a table and chairs poolside, wearing sunglasses and hats, and drinking coffee.
“The show must go on, so they tell me,” Charles said drolly to Annabel, his jowly bulldog face reflecting wry amusement.
“You know, I’m beginning to wonder—why must the show go on?” Elsa commented languidly.
Then she sat up suddenly and leaned forward, as they all heard shouting coming from below. It was Yves, the pool director, calling to his lifeguards to abandon the pool area and help him at the swimming cove.
“What’s going on?” an older English guest—a walrus of a man with a great big white handlebar mustache—called down to the lifeguards. Someone shouted back at him.
Perplexed, the guest turned to the few people left around the pool and asked, “I say, can someone translate? I can’t make out what the devil that lifeguard fellow is trying to say.”
Annabel obligingly went to the stone balustrades and peered over. Yves was looking upward, saying in French, “The body of a drowned man has been found on the coastal path.”
Dr. Gaspard, emerging from the men’s locker room after a swim in the pool, heard this and immediately hurried down toward the lifeguards. Annabel advanced farther so that she could hear what was going on.
She watched Dr. Gaspard disappear around one curve of the coastal walkway and then reappear at another. He moved carefully out among the shoreline rocks, crouched, then lowered himself, evidently to where the body was. Annabel still could not see it.
Elsa had come to the railing. “What happened?” she asked, as one lifeguard shouted to another about what he was being told by the doctor.
Annabel listened and then translated, “The lifeguards thought the man drowned in the storm last night. But now the doctor says no, his neck is broken, so maybe he fell from the cliffs. They say perhaps he’d been drunk and fell down and got washed into the sea. But the tide brought him back.”
“How awful! Do they know who he is?” Elsa asked.
Annabel shook her head, and she felt compelled to descend the stone steps and open the gate to the cove. The lifeguards had put the body on the stretcher and were getting in position to carry it up the path. The doctor was about to cover the man’s face, but Annabel got there just in time to see it.
The dead man was Jack Cabot, still in his evening clothes from last night.
Yves glanced over at Annabel, and what he saw in her eyes made him look stricken with sudden sympathy. She felt herself slipping, as if the ground beneath her feet were giving way. She’d never fainted before, but now it was as if she were dissolving and being sucked down a drain; she could even hear the suction sound whooshing in her ears. But perhaps it was just the sea.
Someone else caught her before she hit the ground. It was Rick, who’d been jogging along the coastal path and had caught up with this tragedy. When he’d spotted Annabel, he sped over to her.
As she came back to full consciousness, Annabel felt herself being lifted up by strong arms, and then she was bobbing up and down as Rick hurriedly carried her back up to the hotel, just as he’d carried little Delphine.
Yves had telephoned Oncle JP, so he was waiting at the door, and he told Rick to lay Annabel down on the sofa in his office. Dr. Gaspard had followed her and now took her pulse, listened to her heart, looked into her eyes.
“She’ll be all right,” he concluded. “I must go now and fill out the dead man’s medical report.” Annabel moaned at the way she was hearing Jack being described.
“Anything I can do?” Rick asked worriedly, gazing at her.
“Thank you, she will be fine. She must rest,” Oncle JP said quietly.
“I’ll be on the terrace. If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask,” Rick said as he left. Oncle JP thanked him and moved to shut the door.
But Elsa and Charles had followed her, too, and were hovering worriedly. Now Elsa bustled deliberately past Oncle JP to hand Annabel a glass of water, which she drank slowly.
“I am so sorry about Jack,” Elsa said softly, sitting beside her.
Annabel looked up at her uncle, still dazed. “Jack was trying to warn Téa,” she said in a choked voice. “To tell her that I knew she was working for the Nazis.”
She was past caring who heard her or what secrets she was revealing. She hated the whole rotten world. Especially herself, for causing Jack to panic and go after Téa in the pouring rain. If she hadn’t opened her big mouth, surely Jack would not have thrown caution to the winds and dashed away so impetuously.
“Which one is Téa?” Charles asked his wife, baffled.
Elsa said, “You know, darling. The one you were admiring at the party last night. The one they call ‘the next Garbo.’ Although from the sound of things, it turns out Téa was more Mata Hari than actress.”
Charles whistled. “A regular female Iago,” he marveled.
“Please excuse us now,” Oncle JP said. “I must speak with my niece in private.”
Elsa rose and said reassuringly to Annabel, “We’ll be right outside at the tables on the terrace, pretending to read the newspaper.”
Annabel thanked her and watched them go. Then she turned to her uncle and said in an anguished tone, “I told Jack not to go after Téa. I tried to stop him.”
Oncle JP said regretfully, “You cannot prevent a man from running headlong into his fate. Sooner or later, he will arrive at the destination that he is determined to reach.”
He looked so sympathetic that she instantly said, “I saw Dr. Gaspard whisper something to you. Was it about Jack?”
Her uncle nodded. “He may have been—strangled—before his body fell into the sea.”
Annabel received this as another blow upon a bruise. “But why? Why did someone have to—kill him?” she said in a burst of fury.
“I imagine that he knew too much about them already,” Oncle JP said thoughtfully. “The Nazis don’t want some movie star going back to America, where he could run around telling everybody what Téa—and the Nazi spies disguised as helpful Hollywood consultants—are really up to. They want America to stay neutral if Europe goes to war.”
“Where is Téa?” Annabel asked suddenly. “Does she even know that Jack—?”
Oncle JP shrugged. “She has left the Grand Hotel. We believe she sailed off with Herr Volney on his yacht, back to Monte Carlo. I would bet that she’s ultimately headed for Germany; I sincerely doubt that we will ever see her again.”
“How do you know all this?” Annabel said dully.
“The studio’s chauffeur,” Oncle JP said. “Unbeknown to Sonny, the man was working with the fascists all along. He was the voice you heard in the villa, speaking in French. The police caught up with him and are interrogating him still.”
Annabel, shocked, recalled the quiet man she’d seen occasionally at the villa, carrying clothes for the actors. All is ready, he’d said. She asked in a horrified voice, “Did he kill Jack?”
“He denies everything, of course. Says as far as he knew, Téa and Jack both got on that yacht last night. But we’ll get the truth out of him yet.” Oncle JP sighed. “I won’t need you until the lunch and dinner service, Annabel. If there are still guests left here to feed!”
Annabel suddenly remembered Scott. “I have to see if the screenwriter needs anything,” she said, rising.
“Are you sure? Your work with him is done,” Oncle JP reminded her.
“Yes, I want to say goodbye,” she said. Her uncle understood and nodded.
But she also wanted to ask Scott if he’d heard anything more about what happened to Jack last night. So she hurried off to the Jasmine Cottage.
She had to pass the Villa Sanctuaire. When she arrived, the front door was open, and cautiously she went in. Nadia the maid was there—the same woman who’d given Annabel the key so that she could remove the codebook.
For a moment, they both exchanged a look. Then Annabel glanced around, walking through the front rooms, surprised to find the villa so quickly being emptied of the previous tenants’ personal possessions, with drawers and closet doors yawning open.
She paused at Téa’s bedroom and saw that all of her scarves, her perfume bottles and cosmetics, her shoes, the suitcases, were gone. Only the faint scent of attar of roses remained.
The maid glanced up and said, “Miss Marlo departed sometime last night or early this morning. She left the gowns the studio sent her, so they’ve been returned to the designers from whom they were borrowed.” She lowered her voice. “But last night, before the storm, when I came to return the codebook, her suitcases were still here. So I was able to put the diary back where you found it. When I left the villa, I saw her coming away from the party with Herr Ubel, but they didn’t see me. So they won’t know that it was ever missing.”
Annabel imagined Téa hastily departing in secret, and she thought, Perhaps that was her plan, all along, to leave with her brother—and without Jack. Does she even know that Jack is dead? Or did she leave because she heard about it? Is she working with his assassins, or did they do it to scare her?
And yet, she suddenly recalled something Téa had said to her when she sat her down on that sofa: You can give a man all the adoration and children that he wants. It struck Annabel that perhaps Téa, in her own strange way, had been giving Jack away to Annabel.
Nadia gestured toward Jack’s bedroom. “But Mr. Cabot’s things—they are still here. Your uncle has made inquiries, but the head of the studio told us that Mr. Cabot has no living relatives to claim his possessions. The studio doesn’t want them, either. I have instructions to pack them all up for the lost-and-found cupboard, in case someone turns up to claim his things—but we will probably end up disposing of it all, if nobody asks for it.”
“Wait a moment.” Annabel felt that it was her duty to go into Jack’s room and examine what was there. She felt as if she were protecting him somehow.
Immediately upon entering his bedroom, she could feel his presence and was overwhelmed again as she stared at his things. His clothes, his shoes, his panama hat. His sunglasses. Some cuff links, a wristwatch. Soap and aftershave. His comb-and-brush set, neatly arranged in a black, silk-lined lacquer box. All looking so normal, awaiting his return.
Annabel sank down on the bed. A sudden clear thought had entered her mind, and now it seemed to make her heart swell as if it would burst: Why didn’t I ever tell Jack that I love him?
She’d been too fearful that such a declaration might put him off and cause him to say something she didn’t want to hear. How utterly silly that was. Ultimately it would surely not have made a difference if she’d declared her love; she knew that. And yet, at this moment, it would have been the only thing that might console her right now, to know that she had unreservedly given him all that she had to give.
Her sorrow was so overwhelming that she couldn’t move, just sat there like these few touchingly modest possessions of his, mutely waiting for his return. The clothes still smelled like him. The jaunty hat and sunglasses seemed still imbued with his bright energy.
And his camera bags. She reached out to touch them. She remembered the fun they’d had shooting some film at Sainte-Agnès, with all the twisty narrow streets, and the old stone church with the sonorous bell in its ancient tower. She could not bear to lose all that. So she picked up the camera bags and film, and then, at the last minute, she took his handkerchief with his initials monogrammed on them in dark blue. J.C.
The maid had been busy in Téa’s room, changing the bedding, polishing the furniture surfaces. Now she looked up at Annabel without asking any questions. They merely nodded to each other, as if they’d both been assigned to give some kind of last rites to the dead.
* * *
At the Jasmine Cottage, Scott was packing up, too. He’d already thrown his clothes into the open suitcases rather quickly and haphazardly. But now he was patiently, methodically sorting through his papers, pens, and notebooks with special care. Like a priest undressing the altar after Mass, Annabel thought, admiring Scott for the things he valued, even when the world was going all to hell around him.
He seemed relieved to see her. “Annabel!” he exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. Scott said ruefully, “It’s like the Great War all over again. But strangely enough, I feel revitalized instead of defeated. Animal instinct, I suppose.”
“Can I get you anything?” Annabel asked. “Do you need a ticket, a taxi—?”
“It’s all done. I’m sailing with Sonny’s crowd,” he announced. “That’s one good thing about being under contract. Sonny feels he hasn’t wrung the last drop of work out of me yet. He’ll have me doing rewrites across the Atlantic, even if the Germans torpedo us all the way. Well, I figure I’d be lucky to even get a seat on the poop deck.”
He paused, his eyes alight, as if suddenly struck with a great idea. “Why don’t you come with me?” he suggested. “I’m sure I could say you’re my secretary and get you a seat. Or else you can just be a stowaway. Once we’re miles out to sea, you’re home free. Come with me to Hollywood, and help me finish my secret novel.”
Annabel shook her head sorrowfully. Scott said softly, “I’m sorry about Jack.”
With a small gulp, Annabel sank onto the sofa and burst into tears, the first ones she’d shed since finding Jack’s body. Scott said in some alarm, “There, there, now!” and sat down beside her, holding her hand and letting her cry until her tears were spent.
“Annabel, you’re a very remarkable girl,” Scott said finally. “You are bright and talented and beautiful. You may be feeling very old at the moment, but you are young, and where there’s youth, there’s always hope. Even though this world we’ve shared may come to an end, take it from me—nothing lasts forever, not even war. One day the whole mess will be over. You’ll drift around like a sleepwalker for a while, trying to figure it all out. Well, don’t bother—it can’t be done. I went through all of this in that last war, so I know, believe me. But then, one day, the sun comes out again—you feel it on your face, you breathe in the new, clean air, and you’re so damned glad. Because for you, life is just beginning. Trust your old Uncle Scott.”
“You’re so nice,” Annabel said quietly.
“Sure I am. If you ever get lonesome, come look me up. Anytime.”
He hesitated, then leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Then he rose, to finish packing up his pages, his manuscripts, his letters, his ledger, and his dreams.
She watched as the porter came for his bags, and Scott tipped him generously, as if he were glad to do it. She’d seldom seen a rich man be so happy to share his money like that.
On his way out, Scott doffed his hat at Annabel with a wide grin. “You know what they say. ‘See you in church,’” he said jauntily.
And he went off down the pebbled path, whistling. She sat there listening, until he was gone.
* * *
The official opening-night screening for the first Cannes Film Festival took place on August 31 with The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Annabel attended it with Oncle JP and Rick, thanks to Elsa, who’d secured balcony seats for them. There were still a lot of people here—mostly those who’d expatriated to France years ago and simply refused to leave their beloved Riviera residences—so the theatre was filled with an eager audience.
Annabel peered down at Charles and Elsa when they made their entrance, looking so glamorous as they walked inside amid flashbulbs popping, until they reached their orchestra-level seats and graciously bowed before sitting down.
The lights dimmed, a curtain rose, and a hush fell over the theatre as Victor Hugo’s great novel sprang to life on the screen. Annabel gasped when she first saw Charles, for she could barely recognize him in his Quasimodo costume and makeup. The poor Hunchback’s face was all twisted, his nose like a pig’s, his eyes and mouth barely able to move at first.
But soon Annabel saw Charles’s compassion, intelligence, and wit shining through the sad creature’s eyes, lighting up the face of the Hunchback. His voice was low and humble. With his every gesture Charles gave the poor, bent body of the bell ringer the breath of life. In this fine actor’s skillful hands, the suffering Hunchback became the real hero of the story, more so than the dashing man whom the gypsy girl fell in love with.
The young and beautiful Maureen O’Hara made a compelling heroine, but Annabel couldn’t help giggling when she first saw her, thinking of what Elsa had said: I don’t trust a girl who does such fastidious sewing. Nice, neat, tiny little stitches. Only nuns and murderesses can make such perfect stitches.
And Annabel winced throughout the terrible scene when the Hunchback was tied to a wheel and publicly whipped. With each lash she remembered what Elsa had said about how painful that scene had been for Charles to endure.
But throughout the film he was astonishingly graceful and acrobatic as he leaped about the towers of Notre Dame cathedral and rang its big bells, illustrating the childlike pathos of his character, leading up to the breathtaking moment when all seemed lost for the gypsy girl, and even her handsome hero could not save her from the gallows—so it was Quasimodo who rescued her, jumping on a rope and, in one long great swing, heroically scooping the gypsy off the scaffolding and away from the hangman, whisking her back to the safety of his bell tower sanctuary.
Finally, when the humble creature had to watch the girl go off happily with the young man she loved, leaving the cathedral and her silent admirer behind, there was one last brilliant moment. The Hunchback sat high on the ramparts beside a stone gargoyle, watching the girl who was far below on the ground walking away from him forever—and now Charles delivered the final line of the film, with painful, perfect feeling, as the heartbroken bell ringer voiced his agony to the impassive gargoyle figure on the cathedral tower beside him:
“Why was I not made of stone like thee?”
Annabel felt his grief as her own. As she sat there quietly in the dark, mourning the loss of Jack, tears spilled out of her eyes, and for a moment she wished that she were made of stone, too—but no, no, not really. For grief was still a form of love, and love was clearly the only way to survive in a world of cruelty.
Afterward, Elsa and Charles were whisked off to a gala dinner, surrounded by a mob of admirers and press. As the audience filed out behind them, Annabel still felt the emotion of the movie and the thrill of being here to see it on this special night.
“Say, Annabel,” Rick said, appearing at her side like an eager dog, “I and some of my friends are going off to a party at the casino in Monte Carlo. Want to join us?”
Annabel still associated Monte Carlo with Téa, even though Oncle JP had told her that he believed that Téa was long gone by now.
“No, thank you, Rick,” Annabel said gently. “I need to be near my family tonight.”
He seemed to understand.
Oncle JP turned to Annabel and said, “Tonight, you and I will take a taxi home. But we must first stop at the Grand Hotel.”
Little Delphine was already home after having had an early supper with the neighbor who cared for her, and then Delphine had been tucked into her own bed. Oncle JP was eager to dispense with his duties and return home to her.
“I have to check in with my associates,” he explained to Annabel as he unlocked his office door. “I will be in the radio room. You wait here.”
For a short while, Annabel remained on the sofa in his office, dozing a little. When her uncle returned from that mysterious room at the top of the spiral staircase, she jerked awake with a start. Oncle JP looked preoccupied and grave.
“What is it?” Annabel said, alert now.
“We know nothing new yet,” he said cautiously. “We can only wait. And hope.”
“Doesn’t the codebook help you intercept messages?” she asked.
“Well, we aren’t picking up any messages tonight. Our Nazi guests have all checked out. Anyway, that codebook is only good for the month of August. Tomorrow, you see, is September first, so the codebook will be useless then. But perhaps our fellow code breakers in London might be able to work with our replica machine and the old codebook to uncover more secrets of the Enigma and ultimately to ‘break’ it. Perhaps one day, we will even invent a machine more clever—and diabolical—that will render the Enigma an open secret.”
Their taxi had waited, and they now drove through the quiet streets in silence. The first stop was Annabel’s rooming house. Oncle JP had told her she could stay with him tonight, but she knew that they didn’t really have space for her, and she said, “I’ll be all right in my room.”
“I would like to buy a little house hidden up in the hills, where you and I and Delphine could be safe,” Oncle JP said suddenly, as Annabel bade him good night. It was the first time she’d ever heard this modest man express a longing for something he didn’t have.
Upstairs in her room, Annabel was so tired that she undressed automatically and then tumbled into bed. She fell asleep instantly.
The next day, the news was everywhere, in the boardinghouse and out on the streets.
Germany had attacked Poland this morning.